Re: Bye
Date: 29 May 2006 19:04:59 -0700
Message-ID: <1148954699.129746.304650_at_y43g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>
mAsterdam wrote:
>
> Let the asshole get away with it.
It's really not a question of "letting" anyone do anything.
Anyone can post any string of characters. I have no
way of sanctioning them if their posts don't meet my
standards, regardless of whether my standards are
those of impeccable politeness, strict logic, topicality,
or fashion sense.
As far as calling people on what they say, the last
time I took up the cause of politeness, there were
people coming out of the woodwork to curse me and
tell me how wrong I was, and not much support for
my position. It is extremely fatiguing (as I am sure
you are aware.) It doesn't seem to help at all, and
worse, does nothing to further my understanding
of database theory, which, at the end of the day,
is the reason I am here.
Who knows? Maybe the rules of polite society are
inapplicable in an online forum. After all, they were
designed for face-to-face contact, and we don't
have that here. We don't have a situation where
the various participants all belong to the same
social circle.
Even more relevant, it is, strictly speaking, not polite
to point out the failings of others, even if those
failings are at politeness itself. So my very idea
of offering unsolicited correction of other people's
behavior is unsound at its core. It is a dilemma.
I have on occasion imagined that we could split the
group, and have comp.databases.theory.polite
and comp.database.theory.rude. Ha ha! Of course,
the rude people would get big laughs out of behaving
rudely in the polite group, and laugh endlessly about
our inability to keep them out. Again, the lack of
sanctions is key. In a very real sense, *all* newsgroups
end in ".polite" and all the rude people ignore that fact.
Contempt for the standards of civil behaviour is the
very definition of rudeness.
What if we did have sanctions? What if we could set
some standards, publish them, and exclude people
who didn't meet the standards? What standards
would we set? How would we decide what is allowed?
Trying to actually come up with a set of rules that
would work made me realize just how problematic
Marshall Received on Tue May 30 2006 - 04:04:59 CEST